Pages

Monday, July 29, 2013

Gloria j Zucaro's "Summer Sloth"

That is such a funny word!  I know it is one of the deadly sins in the Bible.  It is also the animal that moves so slowly you can hardly notice(except your eyes are glued onto his terribly threatening 4 inch toenails!).  But sometimes I feel like a sloth because I think I should do a particular task, and then I think, "Oh, I will do that later, I would rather..."  So I actually didn't even realize that 4 days had gone by since I last posted!  I have had decisions on moving, conversations about finances, open house visits to possible houses, doctors appointments, scheduling for carpet cleaning, electrical fixes and more pleasurably, visits with friends and family this last week.  But now I am here and ready to show you some of the fun and challenging projects we did at The Clearing.  

Our second painting that we started on Monday afternoon was an "Egg Painting using color references from Zhaoming Wu."  I am quoting Frankie's title on our synopsis of projects.  Frankie had made many reference photos of eggs nestled into fabric.  Some were on pedestals, some just surrounded on the fabric.    We were to use these only as a starting point, but to learn from this how to design/compose a painting by placing your egg in an area and leading the viewer to it.  We were also supposed to show how the colors surrounding the egg reflect onto it.  Use soft and hard edges and most important, too, use a color combination that we didn't ordinarily use or even disliked!  Here is my pastel painting of my egg.
8" Square Wallis Paper with Terry Ludwig Pastels.

I surprised myself with being more abstract than usual.  If you notice, no turquoise!

Tuesday morning was the beginning of a really fun project!  Frankie titled it "Paint an Ice Cream Sundae".  Frankie and her husband Jay decided to stop at Steak & Shake to do research(Yeah, I bet! lol)  Anyway after taking pictures at Steak & Shake for two days in a row of different ice cream concoctions that they paid for and ate, Frankie decided it was going to be too expensive and fattening to make 30 reference pictures.  So she went on-line and got copyright-free photos.Banana Split Royalty Free Stock Photo          This was my choice to paint because, of course, I was attracted, not to the banana split, but to the background colors.  Well originally I tried to put in all the squares of color, but alas, it looked horrible!  So a very abstract background using those colors is shown below with my actual painting.  

8" x 10" Wallis Paper with Terry Ludwig Pastels.

It was so much fun that afternoon to see all the different ice cream treats created by 15 artists!

More tomorrow or the next slothless day!

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Gloria J Zucaro's "Oops Day"

Hello!  I attended a pot-luck luncheon with a group of artists friends yesterday and forgot about posting when I got home.  At our get-together in Huntley, IL every July at Sandy's house, we not only bring a salad or dessert to pass, but we bring show & tell of some things we have been working on.  Many times we also do a project.  This year Sandy had us bring some supplies and we all did some "Pourings"  It was fun and different.  She learned to do it with enamel paint for automobiles.  But we used acrylics.  I think the oil based paints are more of a surprise because they continue to "move" until they dry and you get much different results than what you started with.  We all had a couple of canvas boards or stretched canvases.  We poured some acrylic paint into small disposable cups and added enough water to make them pourable but not too runny.  We each had a large aluminum pan to do this over out on Sandy's patio.  After we were done we washed out her aluminum trays and put our mostly dry paintings into our own aluminum trays to carry our work home. 

Here are my two poured paintings, and the first project from The Clearing.

                        
This was done on an 8" square canvas board.  The blue on a 3/4" gallery wrapped canvas 10" x 8"




Below is our warm-up painting at The Clearing.  Easy figures in a group.  Start by making different lengths and widths of color next to each other with a flat brush or in my case the end of a square soft pastel.  Have the bottom end tapering off.  Turn the paper upside down and add sort of "V" shapes to the "tails" of color and add a dot to every flat end of the original strokes.  Turn right side up and add a "shadow" of color under the group.  You are done!  Easy Peasey people!  You can make them more elaborate by adding hats, or brief cases with arms, balloons, etc.                        Have a great day! :>)  Gloria
Don't forget to stop by Paint Party Friday tomorrow, it is so inspiring!

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Gloria J Zucaro's "Door County Trip"



On July 14, my friend Judy and I left for Ellison Bay in Door County Wisconsin.  We were going for a five-day workshop at The Clearing Folk School.  It is about a six hour drive from our area in Illinois, but the traffic was light, the weather was sunny and we arrived ahead of schedule. We checked in at the lodge to pick up our information packet with our name tags, room numbers and Clearing general info.  Some of our friends were already there, so all were greeted with big hugs and lots of enthusiasm.  Our first meeting of the whole group of 15 artists signed up for our workshop, the group of ten poets, and the group making marbleized papers and boxes was at supper at 6 PM in the lodge.
                   
There was also a gentleman there with his wife, (who was a painter).  He was doing "Individual Studies", which means he worked on his own without instruction.  
After dinner there was a slide show of the origin and history of The Clearing which was originally the summer home of Jens Jensen the landscape architect. Here is a quote from The Clearing website.

"The Clearing was founded in 1935 by Jens Jensen, a Danish-born landscape architect. Many consider him to be the most important American landscape architect and The Clearing his "great work."
Before founding The Clearing, Jensen achieved international recognition for designing many of Chicago's parks, along with the private estates of Armour, Florsheim, Henry and Edsel Ford and many other important Midwestern industrialists. " 

After the slide show all the guests sat in a large circle and introduced themselves, told where they were from and what workshop they were taking.  Judy and I were taking...

Oil Painting & Pastel: Creating Painterly Impressions From Your Photos Or From Life


Frankie Johnson


 We had all our classes in "The Schoolhouse" which actually has more the feel of a church.

Below is an interior picture of one of the cabins, although not ours.  But they are all similar with two beds, two desks/night tables, two closets & drawer sets, and a bathroom with a shower. The exterior view is of a cabin that now has a computer hook-up in the shed off to the side which is now enclosed. This is called Mertha's Cabin. She was the caretaker before and after Jensens' death. We were in cabin #8 and there is also a dormitory that has 5 beds, two bathrooms and an extra sink and mirror.  Each person has their own closet & drawers, too.  I had stayed there several times before rooming with Judy.

       
Some photos of some of the 128 acres.                                                                              
Here is the "class" photo from last year, this years' hasn't been put on the website yet.  This is when  Judy and I took Plein Air from Bonnie Paruch.  But a lot of the same people that attended Frankie's class this year are in this class also.  I am the blonde in red in the center back row right.
My friend Judy is the fourth person in from the right in the blue shirt.
          Tomorrow I will start posting some of my pastel paintings I did while at The Clearing.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Gloria J Zucaro's "July Variations"

I have been enjoying a more leisurely pace with my artwork in the last couple of months.  I needed to pull back from 4 challenges a week and 3 in addition monthly.  Since starting my Marla inspired variations, I have amazed myself that I could really tolerate doing more than two of anything.  But since when I start a new variation, I only look at my black and white prototype, I never really get the same pastel painting twice.

I had shown you numbers one through three a couple of weeks ago.  Here are 4-9.  If you would like to be able to see more detail, click on the image and it will enlarge.  I am posting this to Paint Party Friday, which has a huge assortment of talented artists participating every week.  My gallery of works can also be found on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter.
Number Four


Number Five

Number Six

Number Seven

Number Eight  
I could tell I was getting into and Orange and Purple rut, so Number Nine below has some different colors.  That is a quandary!  What if you are an Orange and Purple personality?

Number Nine

Thank you for visiting, and have a good week!